Hey everyone,
I thought I’d share the environmental justice mapper since Cire and I didn’t have a chance to in class. Scorecard is a pollution information site that provides information on environmental justice and distribution of environmental burdens. I entered in the zip codes of some major U.S. cities, and if you’re interested, try entering your hometown. There isn’t data for every town, though. Also keep in mind that the numerical values on the bar graphs are indicators rather than actual pounds of pollution released or actual number of cancer cases. Here’s a website to look up zipcodes if you don’t know them: Zip Code Database.
-Nick
Thanks Nicholas! This environmental justice scorecard was extremely informative and interesting. It directly correlates with a lot that we have been discussing all semester! But, like you said there are some faults to the site (i.e. no quantitive information about how much pollution is released, etc.)
I compared my zip code and Middlebury’s zip code and was both surprised by some of my findings and not surprised by others. In New York, people of color and people of a lower socioeconomic class–for the most part–were anywhere from 1.5 to 2 times more likely to be affected by burdens of toxic releases or had higher cancer risks. Surprisingly in Addison county, the reverse seemed to be true in terms of race. But again, there is some information in this scorecard that is lacking which may lead to an explanation of this; after doing some brief research on the census website and found that the town of Middlebury is 96.8% white.
Again, thanks for this Nicholas.
Best,
Alex Jackman